The victim's mother, Melissa Coon, said that her son was walking home from school when he was set upon by two 16-year-old black teenagers outside the front door of his home. "They rushed him on the porch as he tried to get the door open," she told KMBC. "One of them poured the gasoline, then flicked the Bic and said, 'This is what you deserve. You get what you deserve, white boy.' " Then they ran away.

Coon's son lost some of his eyelashes and eyebrows, and the hair around his face was singed. The boy was able to put out the fire on his own and call the cops. He spent several hours in a hospital burn unit.

"You could smell the burned skin," Coon said to KMBC. "You could smell the burned hair. It was just horrible."

Coon said that her family plans to move and her son will not return to the school.

If the students were black, they should be charged with a hate crime. This type of violence should not be tolerated anywhere.

A prime example of why those who argue against the necessity of hate crime laws. Presuming the facts as presented are correct, these boys deserve to have the book thrown at them at a federal level.

Who cares if they were black or not? If Missouri is lucky, they will convicted of some hate crime. What they did was pure evil - it is as though we were living in Pakistan or India. What they deserve is to be executed - preferably in a good old fashioned hanging - like nearby Kansas did to the "In Cold Blood" guys.